Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a dual-bearing reel and a clutch mechanism thereof configured to allow or prevent rotation, transmitted thereto from a handle through a drive gear, to be or from being transmitted to a spool rotatable about a spool shaft with respect to a reel unit.
Background Information
A dual-bearing reel includes a rotation transmission mechanism and a clutch mechanism. The rotation transmission mechanism is configured to enable rotation of a handle to be transmitted to a spool. On the other hand, the clutch mechanism is disposed on a transmission path of the rotation transmission mechanism. Further, the rotation transmission mechanism includes a drive gear and a pinion gear. The drive gear is mounted onto a drive shaft configured to be unitarily rotated with the handle. The pinion gear is meshed with the drive gear. The pinion gear is disposed so as to be axially movable and be rotatable about a spool shaft. On the other hand, the clutch mechanism includes a clutch pin and an engaging groove. The clutch pin is mounted to the spool shaft. The engaging groove is formed on the pinion gear. The pinion gear is movable between a clutch-on position and a clutch-off position. In the clutch-on position, the clutch pin is engaged with the engaging groove. The clutch-off position is located farther away from the spool than the clutch-on position is. In general, a dual-bearing reel employs helical gears as a drive gear and a pinion gear in order to enhance strength and increase a gear contact ratio (see Japan Laid-open Patent Application Publication No, JP-A-2012-65574). The direction of helical teeth of a well-known drive gear is set such that the drive gear urges the pinion gear toward the spool when being rotated in a fishing-line winding direction. The pinion gear is thus urged toward the spool in winding the fishing line, and the fishing line can be stably wound up even in application of high load.
In recent years, when the fishing line is subjected to significant tension by an abrupt pull of a fish or so forth, the fishing technique generally used is to perform thumbing of the fishing line while the clutch mechanism is turned off by operating a clutch operating member without operating a drag mechanism. In this fishing technique, releasing and winding of the fishing line can be quickly switched even when a large drag force has been preliminarily set. However, the fishing line is subjected to significant tension, the urging force by the aforementioned helical teeth is increased. This hinders a quick clutch-off operation in the well-known clutch mechanism.